A Second Hand Conjecture

Tsitsernakaberd (photo: Adam Lederer)

Just when bewilderment at the spectacle of Steve Cohen going absolutely berserk on an Armenian film crew had started to subside (they were trailing him over his opposition to recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide), I read that an Armenian socnet war is on the make.

Due to the perception that Obama is stronger on the issue of recognition (even though he endorsed Cohen), ethnic Armenians have apparently become strong supporters of Obama over the genocide issue, while Turks are lining up behind John McCain in default opposition.

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Following up on my first post here on A Secondhand Conjecture, I’m happy to say that the troubles T. Hayden Barnes had seem to have come to a happy conclusion. The student, who was once a “clear and present danger” is now not so much, and has been allowed to return to his classes. All credit goes to F.I.R.E. and the attorney they directed the student to.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t chalk this one up to professional representation,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at FIRE. “I think when it was just Hayden presenting his case to the Board of Regents … the board had absolutely no incentive to take him seriously and really evaluate the case on the merits. When lawyers are involved and some media attention is garnered,” he said, it becomes a “different equation.”

(H/T insta)

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A sophomore at Valdosta State University was expelled after criticizing his university’s plan to build two new parking garages with student fees.

In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.

Cited as additional evidence was “a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?”” Which seems obvious to anyone I should think to be referring to filming, and not guns.

Now it seems obvious that the university overreacted here, however, were they even justified at all? Can calling the garage the “Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage” be considered an underhanded threat? Buildings are named for living people all the time, (just ask Robert Byrd), but I think the Memorial part is always used posthumously. Rather than investigate further, the university decided to simply expel the troublesome student. Couple that with their seemingly illiterate reading of the other “evidence”, and it seems obvious that the zero tolerance policies have struck again.

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